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Overview

Author(s)

Praise

Summary

An introduction to generative phonology using tools of basic set theory, logic, and combinatorics.

This textbook introduces phonological theory as a branch of cognitive science for students with minimal background in linguistics. The authors use basic math and logic, including set theory, some rules of inference, and basic combinatorics, to explain phonology, and use phonology to teach the math and logic. The text is unique in its focus on logical analysis, its use of toy data, and its provision of some interpretation rules for its phonological rule syntax.

The book's eight parts cover preliminary and background material; the motivation for phonological rules; the development of a formal model for phonological rules; the basic logic of neutralization rules; the traditional notions of allophony and complementary distribution; the logic of rule interaction, presented in terms of function composition; a survey of such issues as length, tone, syllabification, and metathesis; and features and feature logic, with a justification of decomposing segments into features and treating segments as sets of (valued) features. End-of-chapter exercises help students apply the concepts presented. Much of the discussion and many of the exercises rely on toy data, but more “real” data is included toward the end of the book. Exercises available online can be used as homework or in-class quizzes.

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Authors

Alan Bale

Alan Bale is Associate Professor in the Program in Linguistics at Concordia University, Montreal.

Charles Reiss

Charles Reiss is Professor in the Program in Linguistics at Concordia University, Montreal. He is the coauthor of I-Language: An Introduction to Linguistics as Cognitive Science and The Phonological Enterprise.

Endorsements

This unique and innovative textbook elevates phonological analysis by teaching it hand in hand with mathematical and logical reasoning. Every student of linguistics should read this book.

This book, taking nothing for granted, meticulously captures the beauty of phonology as a formal system within the human mind. With vivid and memorable explanations, it opens new possibilities for the fully integrated teaching of phonology with mathematics, philosophy, and computer science.

Yuni Kim

Lecturer in Phonology, University of Essex

This is a unique and very successful textbook. It is formally rigorous, addressing many issues of how phonological analyses actually work that are left out of other books. But it is also very didactic in introducing all of the concepts in manageable servings and offers a generous number of practice problems tailored directly to the issues at hand.

William J. Idsardi

Professor, Department of Linguistics and Program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science, University of Maryland

Phonology was arguably the first among the cognitive sciences to receive rigorous mathematical formalization, but this is sometimes forgotten. In the first book to lay out the field's very precise logical modes of argumentation explicitly for the beginning student, Bale and Reiss show how much can be gained from a cognitive approach to phonology by means of formal tools.